This is largely untrue. I have worked in manufacturing my entire adult life and in my experience people are very eager to do manual labor type jobs if those jobs pay well and provide stability. The problem is that most of them don’t. It would make everything more expensive to pay everyone doing these jobs better but it would be worth it longer term by making a society that doesn’t just rely on there being a constant supply of an artificial second class of people that can be underpaid and exploited with impunity. When people say “nobody wants to work manual jobs…” the implied rest of that sentence is “…to make the same amount of money as someone working retail.”
I hate Trump and his idiotic tariffs, but this argument that we need immigrants to do all the jobs Americans don’t want to do is based on the racist idea that Americans are too good to do these jobs- the reality is, they are simply not desperate enough to take them for the amount of pay that is being offered. It’s a blatantly false narrative and it only serves to harm anyone left of Mussolini.
The manual labor willingness drops off in the 40s as people’s health begin to deteriorates people who work in manufacturing tend to drink and smoke and be arthritic with failing discs and knees by 55. White collar jobs have a big advantage with aging, which is why your average age in a factory skews young.
Yeah, that’s a more nuanced take than mine. I sadly doubt this country will actually do anything to improve pay equality however, which I would agree lies at the root of the unpopularity of those jobs.
This is largely untrue. I have worked in manufacturing my entire adult life and in my experience people are very eager to do manual labor type jobs if those jobs pay well and provide stability. The problem is that most of them don’t. It would make everything more expensive to pay everyone doing these jobs better but it would be worth it longer term by making a society that doesn’t just rely on there being a constant supply of an artificial second class of people that can be underpaid and exploited with impunity. When people say “nobody wants to work manual jobs…” the implied rest of that sentence is “…to make the same amount of money as someone working retail.”
I hate Trump and his idiotic tariffs, but this argument that we need immigrants to do all the jobs Americans don’t want to do is based on the racist idea that Americans are too good to do these jobs- the reality is, they are simply not desperate enough to take them for the amount of pay that is being offered. It’s a blatantly false narrative and it only serves to harm anyone left of Mussolini.
The manual labor willingness drops off in the 40s as people’s health begin to deteriorates people who work in manufacturing tend to drink and smoke and be arthritic with failing discs and knees by 55. White collar jobs have a big advantage with aging, which is why your average age in a factory skews young.
Yeah, that’s a more nuanced take than mine. I sadly doubt this country will actually do anything to improve pay equality however, which I would agree lies at the root of the unpopularity of those jobs.